Should PARCC Be Killed Before School Kids Even Take The Test?

Snow storms, opt outs, protests and computer glitches have bedeviled the first week of computerized testing under the new Common Core standards in school districts across the country. Yet students in grades three to eleven from Colorado and New Mexico to Maryland and Mississippi continue to plow through the standardized tests as part of PARCC, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

On Wednesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie defended the PARCC tests in English and math, which roll on for another two weeks, and told parents not to keep their children home.

“I’m not going to kill PARCC before we even take PARCC,” Christie told a town hall meeting in Fair Lawn. “We need to know where your children stand. We need to know whether they’re learning or they’re not learning.”

On its website, PARCC downplayed the problems, citing the 700,000 students who have completed tests as of Wednesday. “The biggest drivers to the call center have been things like forgotten passwords, firewall settings and other easy fixes that can be made at the school or district level,” according to the daily update. On Tuesday, PARCC thanked users for their patience while “the call center phone lines were intermittently available.”

Schools in the District of Columbia, Maryland and much of New Jersey are closed on Thursday and many were closed on Monday and Tuesday due to snow storms that have played havoc on testing schedules.This is the first time that mass standardized testing across so many grades has occurred in the winter rather than the spring.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, hundreds of high school students walked out in protest of mandatory testing this week. The school district said the protests have become “disruptive and even dangerous” as some students walk miles going from school to school. “We respect the rights of students to voice their opinions, but we will not tolerate protests that interfere with the educational rights of others, become disruptive or thrust students into danger,” the district said in a post on its website. It warned that students will be given a zero for the day and could face criminal charges if they trespass on other schools.

A small number of parents have always disdained the annual round of standardized testing and kept their children home on those days. The opt-out movement has gained traction along with the rise in concern about the new Common Core curriculum standards and an overall unease about the amount of school time devoted to tests. PARCC tests, which were developed by Pearson PLC, run in March and again at the end of April through May and June in 10 states and D.C. Another 16 states are part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which begins testing later this month. Some states, such as Florida and New York, bailed out of PARCC and have decided to use their own tests.

“Determining whether states allow assessment opt-outs can be complex and is constantly evolving,” according to a new report by the Education Commission of the States. ECS reports that Texas and Arkansas have laws in place to prevent students from opting out, while California and Utah allow opting out for any reason. Oregon and Pennsylvania allow students to skip tests for religious reasons.

One group called “Arkansas Against the Common Core” suggests that parents schedule a “cordial” meeting with the principal to make it clear that their child will come to school, but won’t participate in testing. Since states need 95% participation to ensure valid results, the group is hoping that 6% of the students boycott. “Without valid test results the standards themselves cannot be validated and the school cannot be held accountable for poor scores,” the group says. “This frees our students from unnecessary stress, privacy invasion and unburdens our teachers from teaching to a test that is tied to their performance evaluations.”

The New Jersey Education Association has been in the forefront of the anti-PARCC movement. Last month the teachers’ union launched a six-week TV and web ad campaign in opposition to the test.It also directs parents to sites that keep lists of “naughty” districts that reject opt outs and “good” districts such as Clifton, where all it takes is a letter to the principal and superintendent for a student to avoid the test while still attending school.

Governor Christie on Wednesday advocated that New Jersey parents give the test a chance. His alma mater, Livingston High School, had hundreds of students take a pass this week. “I would urge parents, please,” he said, “before you even know whether the test has efficacy or not, don’t opt your kids out of it.”

I am combining my lives as a journalist, school board member and parent to cover education, primarily from kindergarten through high school. I worked for news organizations in Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida before moving to South Africa and covering...